Tame the Whirlwind
by ZephyrHawk
Summary: It's been 10 years since Vash left to fight Knives, what will Meryl do when he finally wanders back into her life? First in a series of post-show stories. Rated R for final chapter.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: As a student of copyright law, I am completely aware that it is an act of infringement to prepare this derivative work involving the concepts and characters of Trigun. However, I would also like to point out that, as I have no intention of marketing this story for profit, to prosecute me would be a great waste of time and money. My contributions can only serve to increase the popularity of and demand for this already famous series.  
  
Warnings: R for final chapter  
  
Note from the author: Although I write quite a bit of fanfiction in my head, I very rarely am motivated to transfer it to a fixed media. Hence, this is my first Trigun story. It began as a vignette from Meryl's point of view, and ended up as something of a novella. I felt the need to split it into several parts in order to assist in reading. As of now these 'sequel' titles are "Reap the Whirlwind" and "Inherit the Wind", should you actually have any desire to continue after you're finished with this one. Additionally, there's a couple of other story ideas in the works tentatively entitled "Their Brothers' Keepers" and "Where Angels Fear to Tread". We'll have to see if I ever bother making them.  
  
Inspiration Soundtrack: Let My Love Open the Door- Pete Townshend, One Night in Bangkok- Chess Soundtrack, Trigun end theme- Duh!  
  
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"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great."  
  
-Comte DeBussy-Rabutin  
  
Tame the Whirlwind  
  
Needless to say, he had never returned.  
  
He had walked off that day, a blurred shadow against the torturous sun, and had never come back. And she hadn't said a word. She had tried to get it out, to find the courage to speak what she'd been shouting silently for weeks. But she had failed. Again. So much for her perfectionist track record.  
  
She had, at first, been shocked by her own cowardice. She hadn't needed to say anything, really. She could have hugged him or kissed him goodbye (near strangers had done as much and more). Instead she had stayed leaning nonchalantly by the doorway. Had opened her mouth to speak, and then recounted. Too afraid her words would make him change his mind. More afraid that they wouldn't. She and Millie had watched him amble off to who knows where in silence.  
  
After the initial shock of her failure she had attempted to comfort herself. Surely he'd be back. Surely he couldn't stay away for long. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps this evening. Perhaps she should make some extra dinner just in case he materialized, limping, out of the sunset. But he didn't come, and the food got cold, and each night she fell asleep curled up on the porch rocking chair with a rough blanket wrapped around her knees. And he didn't come. And, of course, it all lead to the eventual conclusion of what she had known all along. Had known as she stood leaning by the doorway so that she couldn't miss him as he left. Had known as she blessed Millie inwardly for interrupting her just at the critical moment of admittance. Had known as she watched him walk away, already consoling herself with thoughts of his return. He was never coming back. He had never intended to return. And she had never told him how she felt.  
  
Not that it likely would have made any difference. It was, and this was a thought that truly scared her, probable that he had already known. She had been taught that men were usually blind to such things, that emotions and all the baggage that accompanied them were as foreign to them as oceans were to her. And nothing she had experienced in her youth had made her think otherwise. Men were boorish, rude, inconsiderate, sex fiends. But then, Vash wasn't like other men.  
  
He certainly wasn't stupid. It had taken her while, but eventually she had come to the conclusion that it took a real genius to get away with acting that idiotic. And he wasn't unaware of people's feelings. Point in fact, he'd shown considerable insight into emotions that others didn't even know they had. He also certainly wasn't afraid to vent his own emotions. Although she was pretty sure his crying like a baby at the slightest thing was an act, she was certain she had seen him at times truly sad, and happy, and, on one or two occasions, murderous. No, it was a good bet he had known about her feelings for him all along, perhaps even before she herself did. And it hadn't changed a thing.  
  
Later, when life had returned to a semblance of normalcy, her mind would wander back to the time they had spent together and wonder where on earth she had gotten the idea that he would even care. She was not sure exactly when she had come to the realization that there was room in their clutter of a friendship for more, but as soon as she did she had found herself unaccountably hopeful that their relationship would change. Hopeful against any logic or sense of understanding. Her memory of those times was painfully clear. How she would try to talk to him, maybe draw him into a conversation that didn't involve the weather, or their destination, or death and destruction. How he would look at her with open eyes that didn't judge her when she found herself unable to speak and had to mumble "nothing" and turn away. Those tense moments had seemed like hours to her, short as they had been in actual time. How short for him who had been young when the ships first fell out of the sky? How insignificant the sharp, fast beating of her heart to him who had held the love of so many? How stupid and petty were her hopes and dreams and desires to one who had seen the dreams of millions burnt to dust in the atmosphere, who had given hope to those with no more reason to live, who watched people's lives like the unreal, two dimensional scenes on a movie screen? What had she expected in those brief breathless moments? Did she even know herself? He was older than her, way older. Did she think he had never had a woman before? That he had never known girls smarter than her, or prettier? What, in those instants of conceited stupidity had she ever thought she could offer to him?  
  
And then she would laugh. A high pitched false sounding laugh that would cause everyone in the crowded office to look up with alarm. And when she stopped her fierce giggling before it could turn into sobs, they would shake their heads and turn respectfully away from the poor girl whose brains had clearly been addled by the scorching sun of the outer territories.  
  
There was, of course, the possibility that he had been killed. In fact, the idea was not all that farfetched considering the circumstances. But during their time together she had come to find that he was extremely resilient, and, after she had learned a little more about his past, had found herself questioning whether he really could be killed at all. The most telling factor for her, though, was that she just felt, deep down in her soul, that he was alive. She knew she was being a foolish girl for thinking, like the heroine in some fairy tale, that if he had died she would "just know". But then, it wasn't the most foolish thing she'd done because of Vash. And besides, if there were anyone who was a knight straight out of a children's story, he was it.  
  
And so that was her life. She had had her legendary tale, her taste of adventure, her chance for the castle and the white horse and the happily ever after, and she had missed it. She had been the proverbial little girl who has just found out that magic was real, but that monsters were real too, and fearing the latter rejected both for the warm comforts of home and a stable, normal, life. And in the way of all logical adults, she found reassurance in the world of bankbooks and deadlines, and eventually could forget what her life in the wilds had been like.  
  
That was, most of the time.  
  
Millie had eventually gotten married. The groom was stoic and sarcastic with dark hair and Meryl had politely refrained from mentioning who he reminded her of. And when Millie's whole family came and made such a fuss over their favorite little sister, she couldn't help but be happy for her friend. Within the year Millie was producing a brood of her own. The first had been a little girl named Meryl. "After her godmother," Millie had said, smiling. And not two years later, a dark haired little boy named for his dad. His father was so pleased and proud, he didn't mind at all that, to avoid confusion, his son went commonly by his middle name. Around the house he was Nicholas, Nicky for short, and Meryl politely never commented about that either. Both grew up spoiled by their "aunt" who would tell them stories about how, when she and their mother had been younger, they had gone on adventures and known the famous outlaw, Vash the Stampede.  
  
Not unsurprisingly, Millie's husband never believed the stories. It was beyond comprehension to him that his sweet little naïve bride had ever been the acquaintance of outlaws. He laughed at the stories and even went so far once as to question whether or not they were appropriate material for children of impressionable age. But it was always those stories that they asked for when she was over. "Please, Aunt Meryl, please tell the one about the little boy and the sand steamer." "Tell us the one about you and mommy and the typhoon." And so she would lift each one to a knee and tell them, leaving out the gory parts and the sad parts and making their eyes sparkle with all the crystal belief of childhood. And every time she would cry inside thinking, 'He would have loved this.'  
  
It was after just one of these visits that Meryl found herself in one of the worst sections of town, with absolutely no idea how she'd gotten there. Well, that's not entirely true, she thought to herself, obviously I walked here. Obviously I left Millie's after helping with the dishes and wasn't paying attention to where I was going. Obviously, I was thinking of something else entirely and my feet kept moving and I just made a wrong turn and ended up here. Meryl sighed. Obviously she had been thinking about him. The kids had brought it out of her with their questions until all the memories welled up inside her against her will. Until she had almost drowned in them. And, in a haze, caught somewhere between now and 10 years ago, she had let her legs take her wherever the sidewalk lead.  
  
Apparently, it lead to the 'Outlands Bar'.  
  
Light streamed through the doorway into the trash filled street (when did it get so dark out?). The windows were dirty but she could hear the sounds of revelers within. Someone was singing (already? little early for that isn't it?), badly, and someone else was apparently angry at how a card game had come out. It was probably too much to ask that they had a working phone inside but, glancing up and down the empty street, it didn't look as if she had much of a choice. Meryl slipped her hand surreptitiously into her pocket and wrapped her fingers around the little Deringer she always kept "just in case". It felt strangely warm against her palm and suddenly, she really was back 10 years ago, outside just another rowdy bar in another law starved territory town.  
  
Meryl shook the disturbing feeling of being in two places at once from her head. 'Stop letting your imagination get away with you,' she scolded. Raising her chin and setting her head in what she hoped looked like a confident manner, she pushed through the half doors and into the bright space within.  
  
Inside the eerie sense of familiarity continued. The patrons, as a whole, were unkempt. The bartender was plump, aproned, and surly looking. Balls clinked from a pool table in the corner and the waitresses appeared to have been hired neither for their serving abilities nor their stimulating conversation. Most of the customers didn't even bother looking up to see who had come in, let alone show any interest. Meryl breathed a slight sigh of relief. Dodging a sashaying waitress, she made her way to the bar.  
  
"Excuse me," she asked the bartender. His attention was focused on the card game argument so she raised her voice and stood on tiptoe to make herself more visible over the tall bar. "Excuse me, do you have a phone I could use?"  
  
"Pay phone in the back," he grunted, jerking his head to indicate direction. Meryl mentally went over the contents of her pockets.  
  
"Umm.would it be possible to get some change?"  
  
"Yeah, if you buy something." Meryl despaired momentarily for the loss of chivalry then upbraided herself. She should just be happy she had found a real working phone in this place. Tossing a bill upon the counter, she watched as the bartender plunked down her change and a sweating bottle in front of her without taking his eyes off of the vociferous card game. Picking up both she strode around to the back and found a decrepit black pay phone with chewing gum plugging the return slot.  
  
She deposited her coins and then paused, one hand poised over the numbers. Who could she call? Millie was likely in bed already and her other friends from work..oh, right.what other friends? None good enough to trust to coming down here this late in the evening. No, she had a better idea. Flipping through the torn phone book, she found a reputable looking cab company and dialed them. Thirty minutes, they said. That was fine. She hung up and returned to the common room. Perching herself on a barstool, she raised the cool bottle to her lips, determined to enjoy her unwanted beer.  
  
While she had been in the back, the card game had apparently come to blows and the bouncer slumped languorously against the doorframe had eagerly introduced two of the players to the pavement. However, it didn't take long for the room to return to it's previous decibel level. Meryl let her eyelids slide closed momentarily and allowed the familiar sounds to wash over her. The singer was at it again, his friends egging him on and making laughing requests. The card players had switched games and were muttering angrily under their breaths in between silent, surreptitious glances towards the bouncer. Someone shouted a lewd comment at a serving girl and she gave a tittering laugh in return. The half doors squeaked as another patron strolled in.  
  
Meryl smiled despite herself. This place was coarse. It was dirty. It was a little bit dangerous. It was everything she had loved about the territories but would never have admitted, even to herself. Opening her eyes she saw the bartender glancing suspiciously at her, his hands mechanically dry washing a bar glass. It occurred to her that women probably didn't usually spend this much time enjoying a drink in his establishment. She wondered, vaguely, if the proprietor thought that her phone call had been regarding "business" with one of his patrons. It was the only reason she could come up with for the disagreeable look he was giving her. She almost laughed aloud at the idea. As if she had the clothes, or the body for that matter. But all the same, it made her feel younger and prettier. Glancing at her watch she saw that 10 minutes had passed since her phone call and was almost disappointed that there wasn't a lot of time left. She had to admit it, she had missed the atmosphere.  
  
Behind her the singer had thankfully abated and been replaced by one of his cohorts telling a long joke involving a duck with a gun. One of the pool players gave a short shout of triumph.  
  
"Hey sweet thing," a waitress drawled somewhat seductively to the newcomer, "Can I get you anything."  
  
A chair scraped against the floor as one of the card players rose to use the restroom. His chips clinked as he gathered them. Meryl lowered her half empty beer bottle from her lips and gazed at fat droplet sliding down its side.  
  
"Scotch whiskey, straight."  
  
The droplet froze. Time froze. Or rather, time merged. Past and present, then and now. A space between heartbeats which lasted forever. And, in that moment, had black become white and up down Meryl would not have been in the least surprised, for the impossible became possible.  
  
She knew that voice.  
  
'Ten years. Ten years, Meryl,' she thought to herself. 'Ten years and you still think you'd recognize his voice. Pick him out of a rowdy crowd of conversation, just like that. Silly girl, getting yourself all worked up over nothing.' She blushed with embarrassment as well as determination.  
  
'But I do know that voice. I do.'  
  
'Nonsense,' said Sensible Meryl, 'It's just this bar and those pesky memories. Everything's been weirdly familiar tonight, that should go for voices as well. Listen, listen again, you'll see. It's just some guy, some random patron, come to drink his own memories away for a while'  
  
The waitress leaned up against the bar, pressing her ample bosom against the top, and repeated what the customer had said. The bartender set down his now well buffed glass and proceeded to fill it with a rich amber liquid. He placed the glass on the girl's tray and she flounced back to the table behind her.  
  
"Here you go sweet thing."  
  
Meryl held her breath.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
It had to be! No. Yes. Come on, after 10 years he's just going to show up in a bar on the one random night you wander into it. Why not? He's done crazier things. That's not the point, you haven't even looked around to make sure. Oh, and someone who sounds exactly like Vash but isn't him showing up at the bar I randomly wander into isn't crazy? Just humor me with a casual glance around the room. I'm not sure I can make it look casual. Try.  
  
Meryl set her bottle firmly down on the bar and turned around in her seat, looking as nonchalant as was humanly possible with her torso twisted 180 degrees from the front. Then calmly turned back and laid her hands flat, fingers spread wide, on either side of her beer bottle. It was a trick she had learned in grade school. It kept them from shaking.  
  
It was him.  
  
Sensible Meryl tried to raise her voice, tried in vain to be heard over the excited ramblings of Emotional Meryl, and was summarily knocked off the barstool. 'What should I do? Should I go up to him? What should I say? Didn't he see me when he came in? It's not like him to be so inattentive. What if I've changed so much he doesn't recognize me?' That thought made her grimace. She knew she wasn't ugly, but time had touched her in the last 10 years just as it touched everyone else. Well, except him apparently. 'What if he's not interested in me now? What if he never was in the first place?'  
  
'Well, it's about time you found out.'  
  
Nodding her head in silent assent she gripped her beer tightly and slipped carefully off of the barstool. She turned and faced the table behind her. His red coat had disappeared, replaced with one of brown leather, but equally long. As always his blonde hair spiked up above him, making him look even taller than he was, except for one unruly strand falling over his eyes. Those were staring at his drink, now, not looking her way at all. His hands, gloved and not, gripped the glass before him, dark and light fingers interlaced. Taking a deep breath, she sidled up to him and set her drink down next to his. The sound of glass hitting the table seemed to break his reverie and he glanced up at her.  
  
Meryl panicked.  
  
She wasn't sure what she had intended to do after walking over to him. Embracing him and kissing him within an inch of his life had come to mind (causing her to blush even more furiously than she already was). Also, smacking him about the head and demanding to know where the hell he'd been for the last 10 years. That option sounded more attractive, but she wasn't sure it would achieve the response she was hoping for. And there was another problem. She stood there, shivering, in the hot, smoky barroom and everything she had thought of saying to him over the past decade flew out of her head like dandelion seeds after a swift puff of air. As if ten years had never passed, as if all the time she had spent forgetting about him and moving on with her "real" life had never happened, she found herself drowning in his eyes.  
  
"Huh-hi," she managed to stutter out. 'Oh, great, Meryl, dazzle him with your wit why don't you! It's been 10 years, can't you think of anything better to say?'  
  
"Insurance girl," he replied, with a wry smile. "Long time, no see."  
  
"Yeah," Meryl sighed, "Real long." And suddenly, without her control, she was smiling too. She blushed again and tried to duck her face away, but couldn't quite manage to break the gaze he now held her with. With the toe of his boot he pushed the chair next to him out from the table.  
  
"Sit," he offered, and she obliged. For a moment the raucous bar seemed to go silent. The chair creaked beneath her. The buxom waitress glared a haughty challenge from across the bar, hands on her hips. The bouncer shifted his weight making the floorboards moan.  
  
"So, where have you been the last 10 years?"  
  
She stared at him in open-mouthed shock. Where had SHE been?!? And then she noticed the crinkles at the edges of his eyes, eyes that had turned a light and friendly sky blue. She recognized his look, he was teasing her. Then he was laughing openly at her, his head thrown back. In that moment, Meryl laughed too. She laughed at herself and at him. She laughed at all of the things she'd been doing since he had walked out of her life. She laughed without worrying what the other patrons would think, or the flouncing waitress, or the unpleasant bartender. She laughed, and it was neither high nor strained. And for the first time in a long time, it was real. 


	2. Chapter 2

When they had finally managed to calm down their hilarity, he turned to her with a more serious look in his eyes.  
  
"Really, what have you been up to?"  
  
"Me?" Meryl asked, forcing down giggles and wiping tears from the corners of her eyes. "Oh, you know me. Work mostly. I don't get out as much as I used to, though, just a desk job now."  
  
Vash cocked his head with interest. "And Millie?"  
  
"Millie's married now, Vash." Vash. She smiled with disbelief just saying the name. "She's got two kids. A boy and a girl, five and seven."  
  
"Really?" He flashed one of those infectious smiles. "That's great. I'm so happy for her. If they're anything like she was they must be a handful."  
  
"They are, but they're sweet like her too and-" Meryl caught her breath. He had leaned across the table towards her and his face hovered within inches of her own. His hand had reached out and covered hers. His touch was light and cool. Her own skin felt like a stove top in comparison.  
  
"You're not married." Well, at least that explained him holding her hand.  
  
"No, I'm not." He was gazing at her with that open eyed look, head tilted up slightly so that he had to look at her past his one disorderly curl. It made him seem quite young. Innocent, almost.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"I don't know," she stalled. Being that close to him was making her nervous. " I never bought into the idea that a woman needed a husband to have meaning in her life." She managed to extricate her hand a tad roughly from his grasp. She folded it complacently around the bottom of her drink  
  
Vash sat back and regarded her silently. That was the excuse she had always given everyone else before. It has seemed to satisfy them, satisfy their preconceived notions about her character as a harridan. But he was still looking at her with open eyes. She had guessed he would know it for what it was. "I guess I just never found the right guy," she admitted. 'Yeah,' continued her inner monologue, 'One of the hazards of being a perfectionist, you won't settle for less than perfect.'  
  
They sat in silence for a moment. Across the bar, a waitress tripped while holding a tray. It went crashing to the floor in a tidal wave of spilled liquor, breaking glass, and the amused clapping of the surrounding patrons. Meryl decided to take advantage of the momentary confusion in the room and steer the discussion in the direction she wanted.  
  
"So what have you been doing?" He leaned even farther back into his chair.  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"Ten years and nothing."  
  
"Pretty much," he said in an amused voice. He took out his sunglasses and started playing with them absentmindedly. Meryl wondered if they were the same ones he had always had. They looked the same. 'It would be amazing,' she thought, 'If after all he's been through, those fragile little things survived.'  
  
"Wandering," he added dismissively. He was looking at his double reflection in the mirrored gold surfaces. "First with Knives, and then," he set them down next to his whiskey glass, "On my own."  
  
Meryl looked at the glasses. Her own yellowed reflection looked back at her inquiringly. They were the same. Same hair, same glasses, only the coat had changed.  
  
"How long are you here for then?"  
  
"I hadn't really thought about it."  
  
"Oh." The reflection in the glasses seemed somehow disappointed. An impatient honking noise drifted in through the half doors. Meryl bounded to her feet, sending the table rocking in her haste. "That's my cab," she stammered. He nodded and tossed back his drink. In the space of a few seconds his eyes had changed colors yet again. Now they seemed dull blue, like the sky on a day when it was too hot to do anything but sit at home in front of the fan. She had seen that look in him before too: that day she had found him after he had dragged himself up to the top of the cliff.  
  
"Where.uhh.Could you.umm..," she was stuttering again. "Do you have a place to stay?" she rushed breathlessly through the statement. He shook his head without bothering to raise his eyes to her.  
  
"You could stay with me."  
  
No reaction.  
  
"That is, I mean, if you wanted to."  
  
Blue eyes blinked at her, slowly.  
  
"I have room and.if you want to stick around tomorrow.maybe I could take you to visit Millie.I know she'd love to see you and." Her voice trailed off. Deep within her stomach she was beginning to feel a panicked emptiness.  
  
"I have donuts."  
  
The chair scraped backwards abruptly as he stood. The chink of metal on metal rang out as he tossed his tip upon the table. Setting his glasses into place with one hand, he glanced at her through their periphery.  
  
"Well, why didn't you say so?"  
  
Ducking her head to hide her smile, Meryl headed for the doorway. He fell in step behind her, close enough that she could sense his nearness, but not quite touching. Outside the taxi belched exhaust and the driver tapped his fingers against the window edge in an irritated fashion.  
  
The ride home was not particularly enjoyable. First, because of the uncomfortable silence that permeated through the cabby's cigar smoke, and second because Vash's long spindly legs had never been made to fold up into the tight confines of a car's back seat. Things were made even more cramped by the large misshapen pack, looking as if it, at least, had been through hell and back, that rested in his lap. With a sweet breath of relief they hauled themselves from the cab and made their way up three flights to her apartment.  
  
Meryl couldn't help but sigh as the door swung open and she was engulfed by the sense of all that was familiar and normal and sane. It had been the kind of an evening to make one appreciate such things, and it wasn't over yet.  
  
"It's not much," she said flipping on the light and making a sweeping gesture with her hand, "but it's home." She looked up at Vash to see him squinting from the relative gloom of the hallway into the stark, white, brightness of her foyer. She reached towards him. He gave an almost startled look at her proffered hand and, after a moment of consideration, placed his palm in hers. Meryl had the sudden impression of trying to coax a starved stray out from the back alley refuse it had been using as a den. His eyes shifted almost nervously from side to side and his head seemed tucked in a perpetual shrug, as if he were trying to make himself shorter than he really was. She could almost imagine a non-existent tail tucked firmly between his legs and suppressed the instinct to pat him on the head and call him a 'good boy'.  
  
She turned away and lead him by the hand into the main room of her apartment. It was darker in here, lit only by the orange gleam filtering in from the street lights outside her window. The kitchen was small, but airy, and open to the rest of the room. A small table competed for space on the left side of the room with the one dark leather armchair. The right side of the room was filled by the worn, patterned sofa. There was a television set opposite the sofa, and a small radio, but neither got much use anymore. The tiny bookshelf next to them was so covered in dust that she was momentarily embarrassed. Vash wandered over to the window and pulled her wispy curtain aside for a better view. Light fell across half his face, making one glass lens shine in reflection and turning him momentarily into a harlequin of dark and light.  
  
Meryl walked slowly into the room's center and gave an appraising look to her dilapidated furniture. "The couch is a little small," she said almost to herself, "You can sleep in my bed if you want." She turned her glance onto her guest.  
  
One sculpted yellow eyebrow arched questioningly above the rim of his glasses.  
  
Meryl colored furiously and her eyes widened in shock at what she herself had just said. Sputtering, she managed to croak out, "And I would sleep out here.of course." She grimaced. 'Stupid, stupid Meryl!' He was leaning comfortably next to the widow and wearing a grin that stretched across the whole of his face. Shaking his head with a chuckle, he slipped his glasses from his face.  
  
"That's all right," he said, tossing his massive pack onto the sagging sofa, "I'm fine out here." Sitting down opposite his luggage, he leaned his forearms upon his knees. In the orange half-darkness, his eyes looked green. "It's really nice of you to let me stay here."  
  
"Nonsense," she replied, "A friend I haven't seen in a decade shows up in my town and I don't at least offer him a couch to sleep on? What would my mother say?" She smiled, and hoped the gloom hid the color in her cheeks. "Besides, I could use the company."  
  
The silence was palpable. Outside, a car drove past on the empty street. The clock perched on the bookshelf ticked loudly and the floorboards creaked as Meryl shifted her weight nervously. "Well, umm.," she continued lamely, "If you need anything just.umm..let me know...okay?" Vash nodded, then lowered himself to the cushions, folding his arms behind his head and using his bag as a pillow. He stared quietly at the ceiling and Meryl took the opportunity to tiptoe towards her room.  
  
"Meryl?"  
  
Hand on the knob, she was frozen in her tracks by the sound of his voice. Drifting across the room, it was almost a whisper.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
Without turning around, she nodded in acknowledgement and slipped into her bedroom. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it, surprised at the extent of her own weight and her sudden inability to support it. Sliding to the floor, she tipped her head back against the door frame and began a calming breathing exercise Millie had taught her. When her heart stopped beating loud enough that she was sure it was audible, she finally let herself mentally examine her current situation.  
  
Vash the Stampede was in her home. Vash. The Stampede. The 60 billion double dollar man. The humanoid typhoon. The outlaw responsible for the destruction of no less than two territory towns. The man who, ten years ago, had strode out of her life and into the desert, never to return, or so she had supposed, was in her apartment. Lying on her couch. Not twelve steps from the door to her bedroom. The door that she was now crouched in a helpless heap at the foot of.  
  
And he had said her name.  
  
There had been a time when she had thought he didn't even know it. Certainly they had gone through the majority of their friendship without him ever using it, and she had thought that was fair, seeing as how she had spent the first several weeks of their acquaintance refusing to call him anything at all. But she had been surprised that day when he had answered her simple query, using her name with such casual familiarity. It had been enough to shock the question right out of her memory and she had been forced to fumble for a lame excuse.  
  
That day was burned into her memory with such clarity. There were very few days during that time of strife and pain that could be considered, at their end, to have been good. But that day, well, it had been perfect. They had rented a car to get to their destination; no hijacked sand steamers or smelly pack animals. Millie and Wolfwood had spent the drive flirting merrily in the front seat. Except for Meryl's short question and Vash's surprising answer, the two of them had sat in comfortable silence in the back. And despite some minor troubles later on, they had closed out the day with a good meal and just in general enjoyment of one another's company. It was the last time she had ever remembered seeing Vash happy, or Mr. Wolfwood for that matter.  
  
And he had said her name. Not such a big deal when you came down to it. Nothing to get all worked up over. Certainly nothing to make one weak in the knees. No, she was obviously going soft in her old age. The foolishness of it all struck her like a blow. 'Get up Meryl,' she ordered herself. 'Get off the floor, you fool, what do you think you're doing?' Accepting the logic of her mental self, she unfolded her legs and rose to a somewhat wobbly stance.  
  
Slowly, mechanically, she got out of her street clothes and into her sensible pajamas. She brushed her teeth, turned out the light, and curled up on top of the covers. Pulling her knees up into a fetal position, she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to force her body into a state of relaxation.  
  
Vash the Stampede. In her home.  
  
Smiling uncontrollably, Meryl tried burying her burning cheeks in the cool linen of her pillow.  
  
Millie was going to flip. 


	3. Chapter 3

Meryl awoke from pleasant dreams into a reality which was somewhat dreamlike in itself. Suddenly, she sat up straight in bed and clutched the blankets to her chest.  
  
What if it had been a dream?  
  
Last night had certainly been weird enough for one. What if she had just gone home after going to Millie's and fallen asleep thinking of him? What if she had just imagined it all? Or worse, what if she hadn't, but he was gone anyway? What if he had taken his chance in the early dawn light to sneak away, leaving her with only memories again?  
  
She jumped from her bed in a rush and headed for the door between the rooms, desperate to see whether his lanky form was still draped over her living room sofa.. Halfway there she stopped herself short. She was still in her pajamas. Barefoot and with tousled hair, she had rushed off half cocked.  
  
'You can't go out there looking like this! What if he's still here? '  
  
'What if he's not?'  
  
What followed was a succession of starts and stops as Meryl's desire to find out whether everything she seemed to remember from the night before was real battled with her sensibilities. Finally, she compromised. Running her hands through her hair to smooth out the worst of the snarls, she held her head high and placed her hand courageously upon the doorknob. Opening the door slowly, she peaked at the couch.  
  
It was empty. Meryl's heart fell. Despondent, she let the door swing the rest of the way open.  
  
"Good morning!"  
  
Startled, Meryl turned towards the kitchen, and felt her jaw drop. There he stood. He had stripped down to just a white button down shirt and pants. He was brandishing a frying pan in one hand and a full pot of coffee in the other. He held the coffee pot dangling from one finger like the butt of a pistol. His smile was so big it pulled the corners of his eyes up into a squint.  
  
"I hope you like scrambled. I didn't know, so I guessed."  
  
Meryl blinked in confusion.  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Your eggs?" he continued, "I hope scrambled is okay."  
  
Meryl shook her head and blinked again, as if that would make the scene before her more comprehensible. "Umm . . .yeah . scrambled's fine."  
  
She made her way to the table and sat gingerly down upon one of the chairs. She had the strange feeling that moving without caution would cause the fragile reality she seemed to be inhabiting to shatter. There was already a stack of buttered toast sitting at her place and an opened box of donuts perched in the table's center. Meryl smiled as she realized that a two or three were already missing. "Thanks," she said somewhat belatedly, "You didn't have to make breakfast." Vash walked over to her carrying a plate of steaming food and a mug of black coffee.  
  
"It was the least I could do after you let me stay."  
  
He returned to the kitchen and Meryl wondered if maybe she should pinch herself. She wasn't 100% sure that she wasn't still dreaming. 'Vash the Stampede is in my kitchen making breakfast,' she thought with a wondering shake of her head. She gripped the mug. It certainly felt warm enough (could you feel heat in dreams?). She tasted it. Yep, that was coffee. A little weaker then she generally liked, but drinkable. Vash returned and sat down next to her. He started to tuck in right away and Meryl realized that she hadn't yet tasted his concoction. She watched him stuffing himself with obvious enjoyment and picked up a fork. 'Come on,' she chided herself, 'What did you think? That it'd be poisonous?' She took a bite of the eggs (they weren't bad) and set herself to finishing her breakfast.  
  
"So," mumbled Vash through a mouthful of donut, "Didn't you say something about going to see Millie?"  
  
Meryl's eyes widened remembering and she swallowed what she was chewing heavily. "That's right. She'll be so excited to see you. I'll have to take of work but, well, I'm due." She smiled, between breakfast and the prospect of spending the entire day with her friends, things were shaping up quite nicely. Plus, it was hard not to smile when one's meal companion was busting his cheeks with donuts and exhibiting a zeal close to religious obsession. Paused with the last of the tasty round cakes bare inches from his open maw, Vash closed his mouth and appeared to consider it with great seriousness.  
  
"I don't want to be a bother," he said simply.  
  
"No, really, you're not," she assured him. "Trust me, I've got lots of comp time coming and it's not as if I'm so integral to the agency that they can't survive one day without me." She smiled reassuringly at him. "Actually, I've been looking forward to taking some time off."  
  
There was a strange look in Vash's blue-green eyes. She was always amazed at how they could change colors with his mood or the environment. For someone who made little attempt to hide his true feelings about things, they really were like portals into his soul. But she was confused by this look. She had studied him for so long, and gone over and over her memories of him during the past ten years, but she couldn't put a finger on what this look meant. If she was forced to make a guess she would have to say it was 'grateful'. But that wasn't it. Not really.  
  
Just a moment, and then the look was gone. Lost in a reverently considered nibble of donut.  
  
"Hey, you didn't want any of these did you?" he queried. Meryl laughed out loud for the second time in two days. She was beginning to like this.  
  
The girl who took the call in the secretaries' pool almost keeled over in shock.  
  
"Meryl who?!?"  
  
"Stryfe. S-T-R-"  
  
"That's what I thought you said, it's just."  
  
"Just what?"  
  
"Well . . . it's just . . . I thought that you never take time off."  
  
Meryl rolled her eyes. "I guess there's a first time for everything."  
  
She hung up and, standing by the phone, cocked her head to better hear what was going on in the other room. She had offered the use of her shower to her guest, who had gladly accepted the chance to wash the grime of travel off of his wearied body. She could hear him singing, now, above the sound of the streaming water. She shook her head wonderingly for what must have been the twentieth time that morning and set about choosing an outfit for the day. Normally she just put on whatever was hanging up next in her closet, but today that didn't seem like quite enough. After several minutes of deliberation she made her decision. She had been tempted for a moment to dress as she had when traveling with Millie a long time ago, she had actually loved that silly caped outfit. It was supposed to be practical, fending off the windswept dust of the desert and concealing her minor arsenal, but she had personally thought it gave her a look of distinction. She quashed that idea almost as soon as it surfaced. It was silly to think of trying to regain the past like that.  
  
'Why so, when the past comes to visit?'  
  
She shook her head for the twenty-first time. When Vash emerged with clean rosy cheeks, still running a towel through damp hair, she was standing pristine and unrumpled in a blue T-shirt (that she thought made her eyes stand out particularly well) and a knee length white skirt. He was wearing the same outfit that he had cooked breakfast in. The front was unbuttoned and through it she could see hints of some of the terrible scars he hid underneath. Meryl couldn't help but grimace upon seeing them. She couldn't even imagine the injuries that must have caused them. She didn't think she wanted to. Vash jauntily flipped his hair back out of his eyes and Meryl's heart caught just a little. He looked over, apparently appraising her and her choice of clothing as she had been doing his. He gave her a questioning look.  
  
"Ready?" she asked. A smile was his only reply.  
  
It was busier outside than it had been the night before. Cars fought for position in the middle of the street. People walked by carrying shopping bags and dragging young children by the arm. One such haggard mother passed between the two of them, her son sniffling and wiping at his nose. Vash leaned down as they passed a made a silly face at him. The kid's eyes widened with surprise, and then he burst into a smile. He stared back over his shoulder, giggling at the tall, silly, yellow-haired man, while his mother pulled him away. The two adults smiled back at him, and then turned to glance at one another. There were sharing the same lighthearted smile. Meryl turned away with a light laugh.  
  
Some things never change.  
  
"I know you're just going to love Millie's kids," she stated.  
  
"Hmmm," he replied. He was walking with hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his coat and a thin smile stretched across his face, enjoying the sights and sounds of the boisterous city. The sunlight angled down between the tall buildings and she could see the blue sky framed behind his spiky hair. It was a beautiful day.  
  
"Ah huh," she continued, "They know all about you."  
  
"Really?" he turned to her with an interested look.  
  
"Yep. Every time I'm over there all they want to hear are stories about outlaws and gunfighters and how their mom helped to temper the infamous humanoid typhoon." She had known that would get a rise out of him and she was not disappointed. Stopping dead in the sidewalk, he punched a pistol shaped fist into the air.  
  
"Nonsense!" he shouted, and began waving his fist in a small circle above his head. "Ha ha! Nobody tames the . . .ah . . . umm . . ." He looked around nervously at the people passing on all sides of them. Bending down to ear level, he questioned her in semi-confidentiality. "You don't happen to know if I'm still wanted, do you?" Meryl laughed once again.  
  
"As far as I know," she said stopping in front of a non-descript white fronted building. "But I think you're safe for today, we're here." With that she mounted the steps and knocked twice with the old rusted knocker. Within moments the sounds of a light footed stampede emanated from the other side of the door.  
  
"I'll get it!"  
  
"No, I'm getting it. Argh, get off me Nicky!"  
  
The door swung inwards revealing two sets of eager brown eyes attached to two bodies still jockeying for position in front of the door. Moving as one, the eyes gave a cursory sweep over Meryl and then took in her companion. It was a long look. Their eyes started at the dust hardened leather of his tall boots and worked their way slowly up six feet of jacket to the top of his perpendicular yellow hair. Meryl observed affectionately as their mouths slid open into wide, round 'O's.  
  
"Kids, who is it?" yelled a cheerful voice from the back of the house.  
  
"It's Aunt Meryl and a strange man," the little girl shouted a piercing reply over her shoulder in a voice just shy of being able to break glass. Meanwhile she pulled the door wider for them to enter. Vash had to stoop a little to get through the doorway. It put him more at Meryl's level for a moment and he took the chance to tease her lightly.  
  
"Aunt Meryl?" He raised an eyebrow at her and she rolled her eyes in reply.  
  
"Meryl," cried Millie poking her head around the door to the kitchen, "I'm so glad you're here, I have to-" Her voice cut out in mid-sentence as she took in the scene before her. Meryl went through a mental countdown in her head as Vash raised his hand in a friendly greeting. Three. . .two. . .one.  
  
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!"  
  
A plump, yellow dress wearing cannonball flew down the hallway at the tall man, pushing him back outside onto the stoop with the force of it's attack. Meryl merely closed her eyes and hoped that he didn't crack his head open on the doorframe. When the proverbial smoke cleared, Meryl could see a very surprised looking sixty billion double dollar outlaw being squeezed to death in the grip of a somewhat overzealous Millie. Absently, she dropped a hand to Nicholas's head as he gripped her leg in fear of the horrible screeching monster his mother had suddenly become.  
  
"Oh, Mr. Vash," Millie cried, her face still buried in his coat, "You came back." Looking desperately to Meryl for help and getting none, Vash managed with some difficulty to slip one arm out of his attacker's grip and use it to pat her gently on the shoulder.  
  
"It's nice to see you too, Millie." Millie straightened immediately and, wiping at her eyes with a corner of her frilly blue apron, looked her old friend in the face.  
  
"I always knew you'd come back. I always told Meryl so, you just ask her." She sniffled through the first half of her statement and said the last bit as though it were some sort of challenge. Then, as if forgetting the whole incident, she went on in her normal cheery tone. "Well, there's no use in standing out here on the porch. Come on in and make yourself at home, I've just baked some cookies." And without further ado, she turned abruptly away from him and marched back to the kitchen, pausing only to wave a brief 'Hello' to Meryl as she passed.  
  
Looking even more confused than before, Vash blinked, shook his head, and, smiling, ducked his way back into the house. 


	4. Chapter 4

Seated on Millie's patchwork couch while little Meryl bounced around the room repeating "Vash is here" over and over in a singsong voice and Nicky crouched on one armrest staring at her companion with eyes that seemed to take up his whole face, Meryl took the time to appreciate the peculiarity of her situation. Millie ran in and out of the room with plates full of delicacies for them to try. Her voice grew and faded in intensity depending on whether she was dropping a tray off or heading back to the kitchen for another. She would stand momentarily in front of them with an angelic look on her face, hands clutching her apron in nervousness, and then escape back into the relative safety of her culinary sanctum. Vash was, meanwhile, following young Meryl around the room with his eyes and keeping himself otherwise completely still. Meryl herself was trying to keep up a conversation with the itinerant Millie and failing miserably.  
  
Nicholas leaned forward on the couch and addressed Vash in an almost frightened sounding whisper. "Are you really Vash the Stampede?"  
  
Turning his attention to the little boy who was hovering at his shoulder, Vash nodded.  
  
"My daddy says you're not real," the child admitted in a serious voice.  
  
"Well," Vash reasoned, looking at him over the top of his glasses, "What do you think?" Nicholas reached out a tiny forefinger and touched Vash's cheek. The smooth skin depressed under the inquisitive probing and sprung back elastically with its removal.  
  
"You feel real to me," he asserted. Vash smiled at him and raised a finger to his lips indicating that he should keep silence about their little secret. Nicky smiled hugely in response and removed himself from the armrest to plop down trustingly into Vash's lap.  
  
Millie entered the room at that moment carrying several glasses of lemonade.  
  
"Millie," Meryl interjected before she could shuffle out of the room again, "I think we've got enough, thanks." Nodding, the tall woman set the drinks in front of them and proceeded to munch on a chocolate chip laden cookie.  
  
"Mmmmm," she said with obvious enjoyment, then abruptly turned her attention to the outlaw. "So Mr. Vash, whatcha been doing all this time." Vash had been reaching for a cookie and ended up with the sweet poised halfway between the table and his mouth. Sitting up, he studied the treat as if deciding whether answering without a full mouth or diving into its chocolaty sweetness was the more desirable option. Meryl cleared her throat threateningly and he gave a little half jump. Nicky solved the problem by taking the cookie gently from his hand. Raising a hand behind his head in a nervous gesture, he answered.  
  
"Oh, same old thing." He stretched his arms up over his head then folded them behind it and relaxed back onto the seat. "Wandering aimlessly, saving damsels in distress, chasing the elusive mayfly known as love . . ." Meryl choked and almost spit out her lemonade.  
  
"You okay Aunt Meryl?" her namesake asked and patted her roughly between the shoulder blades. Meryl could have sworn she saw a knowing smile flit across Millie's lips, but it was there for such a short time she wasn't sure that she hadn't imagined it.  
  
With an odd sideways glance at his coughing companion, Vash went on. "How about you?"  
  
"Oh, well, first I was working on the well and then we found water so there wasn't any reason to work on the well anymore and Meryl had to get a job waiting tables so we could keep up on the house payments and then after a while I helped dig irrigation ditches and then Meryl said we should get back to the insurance society and we left and I kept being late for work so the boss threatened to fire me if I didn't get my head on straight, but then I met David and then we got married and had little Meryl and Nicky and that's where I am today."  
  
She smiled broadly at her two guests who were both staring back at her in slack jawed amazement. Meryl shook her head in amused admiration. She had no idea how Millie managed to say all that in one breath. Vash turned towards her with a curious look on his face and then looked back at Millie.  
  
"I'm sorry, did you just say Meryl was a waitress?" Realizing which portion of Millie's statement Vash had latched on to, Meryl raised a hand to her face to hide the telltale red glow of her momentary embarrassment.  
  
"Oh, yes," said Millie, shaking her head vigorously. "After you left the townspeople decided they didn't want friends of Vash the Stampede staying in their town for free and so they asked for rent on the house we were staying in. Well, I was having trouble finding more employment and Meryl offered to work at the local saloon to make ends meet." Millie smiled with childish naiveté.  
  
"I don't understand," Vash said, drawing his light blond brows together and lifting Nicholas to the floor. The child immediately ran to his mother and raised his arms, asking to be lifted into her lap. Millie complied unthinkingly. Vash turned to Meryl, his face a mask of confusion. "What about your jobs at the insurance company, didn't they still pay you?"  
  
Meryl smiled sadly and shook her head at him. "We got paid to monitor Vash the Stampede, or even to chase after him across the desert. But they don't pay you for sitting on your butt waiting for him to just appear on your doorstep." Vash's look didn't lighten at her flippant tone. Instead he turned back to Millie and watched her run her hands smoothly through Nicholas's dark curls.  
  
"When . . . how long did you stay there?"  
  
Millie was smiling fondly down at her son. "Oh, it was about a year, wasn't it Meryl, before you said we should probably head home?" She looked up at her former partner for confirmation.  
  
Meryl nodded. "It was a year."  
  
Vash was shaking his head as if he still didn't understand something. "You wait . . .you stayed there all that time?" He raised cloudy blue eyes to meet Meryl's. There were so many emotions coloring them; pain, surprise, confusion, and . . . something else. Something she couldn't quite identify again. She didn't know how to answer him without making everyone uncomfortable. A protracted silence descended upon the living room. That was, until it was broken by Millie's shout.  
  
"Meryl!"  
  
Meryl jumped, an instinctive reaction to hearing her name shouted loudly in a small, otherwise silent, room. A quick glance gave an explanation for the situation. At the same time she had screamed, Millie had made a lunge halfway across the room to catch a falling picture frame that her daughter had knocked off of a side table. Nicky had been dumped unceremoniously onto the floor in the process and began to cry noisily. Replacing the picture, a wedding shot of Millie and her husband, she scolded the young girl.  
  
"Meryl Millicent, exactly what do you think you were doing?"  
  
"I'm sorry Momma," the girl sniffled, backing away, "I was trying to reach that one." She pointed to a picture half hidden behind numerous other family photographs. Millie leaned forward and retrieved it for her. Handing it to her daughter carefully she went to regain control of her now bawling son. Little Meryl walked over to the two guests sitting on the couch and held the photo up for them to see.  
  
"Is this you?" she asked the outlaw. Meryl looked at the photo and smiled inwardly. She had a copy hidden at the bottom of her sock drawer. It was a rare glimpse of her and Millie during their travels for the insurance society. The two of them stood smiling proudly, side by side, in the foreground. However, that was not what had made it her and Millie's favorite. Wolfwood had always been camera shy, and Vash even more so. It wasn't surprising seeing as how one of them was a wanted outlaw and the other a member of a secret gunslingers' society. Meryl had secretly asked the bartender to take the picture with the two insurance girls in the far right so that you could get a good view of the table standing off in the corner behind them. Seated at it was the dark haired priest and the famous outlaw. Wolfwood, his head leaned against the chair back, was blowing smoke towards the ceiling. His Punisher was leaned carelessly against the wall next to him. Vash would have been in profile, leaning on the table, his chin resting tiredly in one hand, but at the last moment he had noticed the camera and tilted his head towards it. He looked out of the photo through glassine haze of his glasses, his unkempt hair falling in a tangle over his forehead.  
  
Vash took the photograph from the young girl and gazed at it. "I suppose it is," he said. Meryl saw his face fall and wondered if seeing it reminded him of all the bad things that had happened to him during that time, or whether he was thinking of the gun toting priest. She chanced a quick glance at Millie, but her old partner wasn't even paying attention. She was busy doing everything she could to cheer her still sobbing son.  
  
"Hey, how about I take you to the park, would that make you happy?" she said, touching a delicate forefinger to his button of a nose.  
  
With a fist half stuffed in his mouth the young boy looked up at his mother through puffy, red eyes, and nodded. Millie looked up at her old partner apologetically. She received a smile in reply.  
  
Taking the picture frame from Vash and causing him to look her way with surprise she said, "An excellent idea Millie, the park sounds like just the thing!"  
  
Meryl had always been of the opinion that there was no problem that a short jaunt outside couldn't cure. Especially if that jaunt just happened to take you past the ice cream stand.  
  
Vash and the kids had, predictably, wolfed their cones down in no time flat, and, with their moods considerably lightened, had run off to play. Vash had produced two child sized dart guns apparently out of nowhere and was now being chased around the park, screaming bloody murder, by two cyclones of pure, sugar fed, energy. Millie and Meryl perched themselves on top of their favorite picnic table and observed the scene in relative complacency while they finished their cones.  
  
Licking a creamy drip off of where it had fallen on to her hand, Millie began the intensive questioning session that Meryl had known would be forthcoming as soon as Vash was out of hearing range.  
  
"So, how long is Mr. Vash planning to stay."  
  
"I couldn't say," Meryl replied, concentrating on her own disintegrating dessert.  
  
"Maybe he'll stay for good." Millie smiled at her with a suggestive twinkle in her eye.  
  
"I doubt it, Millie." Sighing, she leaned forwards upon her knees and gazed at the playful scene of Vash and the kids over the top of her ice cream. "He's still a wanted man, he has to keep moving around." Noticing a pecan revealing itself from within the melting treat Meryl sought it out with her tongue and was soon crunching it delectably. "Besides, he's got that whole 'Love and Peace' quest thing of his to worry about."  
  
"I dunno," said Millie, her voice muffled by her ice cream. Then seeming to change the subject entirely she continued, "Mr. Vash is really good with kids isn't he?" Vash was unsuccessfully attempting to hide behind the bare pole of a swing set while the two siblings fired from point blank range. Three suctioned darts already quivered where they had stuck to the protective post.  
  
"Yeah, he is."  
  
"Bet he'd like a few of his own."  
  
Meryl smiled in contemplation of that. She nodded. It wasn't hard to imagine Vash playing like that with his own kids. Rocking babies to sleep, tumbling with toddlers on the carpet, playing hide and seek amongst the trashcans in back alleys; all of these were roles she could easily see Vash fitting into. "But you know," she said, frowning, "Being who he is, he probably can't even have children." 'Not in the normal sense, anyway,' she thought to herself.  
  
"Well, you'll never know until you try," Millie enthused, finishing her cone in one bite.  
  
"Millie!" Meryl stared at her friend in surprise. Millie appeared to be at her most mischievous.  
  
"What?" she asked innocently enough. "Didn't he stay at your place last night."  
  
Turning purple, Meryl lowered her head. "It wasn't like that." Then feeling that she needed to explain further, "He slept on the couch."  
  
"Well, now, whose fault was that, hmm?"  
  
"MILLIE!!" Meryl gaped at her friend, nearly dropping her ice cream. Though most people despised Millie's openness as a lack of tact, Meryl had always respected the fact that she was unafraid to speak her mind. In this case, however, she was understandably put out. It was her sex life they were discussing so openly in public.  
  
Not knowing how to reply to her smugly smiling companion, Meryl began to stutter inarticulately. "I . . .but . . . we . . .he . . ." Finally, taking a deep breath and regaining a modicum of control, she managed to continue. Turning up her nose and speaking in her best superior officer voice, she informed Millie that THAT was none of her business. Hoping that this would signal the end of the conversation she returned her attentions back to her half eaten cone. Silence prevailed at the picnic table and Meryl thought with relief that she may have finally escaped the uncomfortable conversation.  
  
"You really should tell him how you feel, you know," Millie said simply. Meryl's only reply was a dark look out of the corner of her eye. "Now, don't go looking at me like that, young lady!" Millie had slipped into lecturing mother mode for the moment, her voice getting louder and more authoritative with each point. "You've been pining for ten years now about not telling him the first time. Don't you dare tell me you're going to chicken out again!" Millie was really getting into the act now. She had risen to her feet and was leaning over Meryl with nearly six feet of her intimidating frame and shaking her finger voraciously inches from Meryl nose. Meryl couldn't help but give a nervous glance over to where the outlaw was wrestling with the kids. Millie was getting rather loud and she was frightened that he might overhear. "I am NOT watching you suffer for another decade, Meryl Stryfe! No way!" And with that, Millie huffed in indignation and rested her fists on her hips. Meryl couldn't do anything but stare in open eyed shock at the force of nature her old partner had suddenly morphed into. She didn't even notice the remains of her ice cream cone tipping to the ground.  
  
"I know," Millie interjected brightly, with an extreme reversal of attitude, "I'll just go tell him myself." And with that she turned on her heel and marched off to where her two rambunctious children now had Vash pinned on his stomach with his arms held tightly behind him.  
  
"MILLIE NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Meryl screamed, launching herself from her seat at the table. She managed to tackle her friend halfway to her destination (not an inconsiderable feat considering the differences in their size), and with her arms locked in a death grip about her middle started pleading for clemency.  
  
With a look only half teasing, Millie crossed her arms steadfastly. "Promise me you'll tell him."  
  
"I . . ." Meryl stalled.  
  
"Promise!" Millie replied threateningly from her position on the ground. Meryl looked up and saw that Vash and the children were now staring at the two women struggling in the dust with great amusement painted across their faces.  
  
"Fine, I promise," she whispered through clenched teeth, swearing silently that the next time she could get Millie alone she was going to be dead meat.  
  
"Well, that's all right then," said Millie with her customary lightness. She smiled up at her old friend, content in having completed her good deed for the day. Her eyes changed from their normal sky color to a darker blue as a shadow fell across her.  
  
"You know, I was just about to ask you girls to come over and help me, but you look like you're having lots more fun over here." Meryl caught her breath and felt her jaw crack as her teeth gritted even further. She could only imagine how the two of them looked, both covered in dust and her with spilled ice cream marring her shirt front. Not to mention the fact that they were collapsed on the ground in a tight embrace. No, nothing compromising about this position at all.  
  
Letting go of Millie's middle, she slowly stood and, dusting off her skirt, straightened with as much poise as was possible given the situation. Even still, it took all of her courage to raise her eyes to meet those of the person who had addressed them. Steeling herself to their laughing intensity, she screwed up as serious a face as she could manage. It failed utterly. Just a glimpse of Vash's smiling face, eyes shining, above the two curious, childish faces peaking out from behind him was enough to set her to giggling in response. Reaching a hand down towards her friend, she helped Millie pull herself to a standing position next to the beaming outlaw.  
  
"Now that's better," he said, twirling one of the toy guns around one finger, a mimic of the trick reflected in the yellow planes of his glasses. He stopped its spinning with a flick of his thumb and smirked at the two girls. "Although I was kind of hoping I'd have to separate you."  
  
To say that Vash never saw the blow coming would be an insult to his heritage and abilities. To say he just played along with the ordeal as he always had was an insult to Meryl's indignation. Regardless, it hurt just the same. 


	5. Chapter 5

Vash insisted on helping with dinner.  
  
Although he had proved himself to be a fair hand at cooking that morning, in Meryl's tiny kitchen he was more of a hindrance than a help. After he had stepped on her toes for the third time she banished him to the edge of the tiling unless specifically called for. He had turned away, head hanging and eyes shining like a kicked dog's. He then swept around as if nothing had happened and leaned against the counter with what she thought was an attempt at an ingratiating smile. She personally had a better impression of a cat just waiting for the chance to strike and cause more trouble.  
  
Turning back to her sauce, spoon in hand, she addressed him. "It's not that I don't appreciate the help, Vash, it's just that this kitchen's a little too small for the both of us."  
  
"That's okay," he answered, "Now you just have to put up with my questions about when everything's going to be ready." Meryl sighed loudly and rolled her eyes, then hid her smile by checking on the spaghetti.  
  
"Just a little longer," she said, turning back to the sauce. She spooned out a small amount and tasted it.  
  
"Can I have some?"  
  
"No, no you may not."  
  
"Please?"  
  
Meryl was suddenly reminded of trying to get little Nicholas to behave on a day when Millie had let him have coffee. "No. I said no, and it's my kitchen, so there." She punctuated this last statement by sticking her tongue out at him over her shoulder. 'Oh, yeah, Meryl, real mature,' she thought. She smiled as she added more oregano, Vash just seemed to bring out the juvenile in her.  
  
"But that's not fair, " he whined.  
  
"Oh yeah?" she challenged, spinning around and brandishing her spoon threateningly, "And just exactly what are you going to do about it?"  
  
Uh oh.  
  
Meryl knew that last jibe had been a bad idea the second she let it go from her mouth. Quicker then her eye could follow he had swept up next to her and gathered her wrists into an tight hold before her chest. Gripping her thusly with one hand, he raised the other and waved the fingers of it at her maddeningly.  
  
"Oh, no," she said, as the defiance in her voice from a moment before was replaced by a whine of near terror. "No, you wouldn't." He paused that way for a moment, hand raised, head cocked, and eyes raised to the ceiling as if he were considering her plea. Meryl's eyes were locked on the hypnotic movements of his free hand.  
  
"Awww," he seemed to relent. "Yep." Meryl squealed and doubled over as he began tickling her midriff. She tried to squirm away from his torturing appendage, but her wrists were still firmly clasped in his other hand. She fought for escape, twisting and bending and pulling until they had managed to switch places entirely in the small space of the kitchen. Sauce from her still held spoon went splattering all over the stove and the sink and the both of them. Vash's laughter mixed with her own uncontrollable giggles as she collapsed her knees in an attempt to lower herself out of his reach. Half hanging from his grasp, tears of mixed laughter and frustration coursed down her cheeks. They were cold against her burning face. Every part of her felt at the moment like it was in flames. In the short hiccoughing breaths she managed between laughter and shrieks of fear, she tried to say something.  
  
"What? What was that?" Vash stopped tickling her for a moment and leaned closer, mockingly, "I can't hear you." Meryl coughed roughly and gasped for breath during this short reprieve.  
  
"Give," she croaked almost inaudibly.  
  
Vash pulled her to her feet and put his hands out to steady her. After she had caught her breath Meryl looked up at him. It was only then that she noticed how closely they were standing. His hands were resting comfortably on her shoulders and his chest rose and fell with still chuckling breaths mere inches from her nose. He was looking down at her with a very mischevious smile. Suddenly, Meryl worried that her ordeal may not quite be over yet. Grinning even farther and with blue eyes flashing he slid his hands down to her waist. She gasped in surprise but didn't even have time to shout out a protest before he had lifted her effortlessly into the air and deposited her upon the kitchen counter.  
  
Meryl blinked. Now their faces were at the same level. She realized that she was still holding onto the cooking spoon. Sitting like this on her counter made her look like she was playing at being a queen, scepter and all. Feeling childish she tossed the utensil into the nearby sink. Vash was still grinning at her like a lunatic. He reached a single finger out towards her. Setting it beneath her chin, he tipped it gently upwards. Meryl's vision swung. Vash's eyes, Vash's hair, the cupboards, the ceiling, the light fixture.  
  
"Vash?" she said somewhat uncomfortably, "What are you-"  
  
Her question was brought to a halt by Vash licking tomato sauce off the underside of her chin. She squeaked and smacked her head backwards into the cupboards causing purple-black stars to explode in front of her eyes. However, it was too late. His move had been too fast and too unexpected to react to. Eyes wide in shock and silent indignation she glared at him. The infamous humanoid typhoon was leaning away from her with a considering look on his face.  
  
"Hmmm." he ruminated, "Not bad." Then, meeting her eyes, he smiled. "Gotcha."  
  
It was then that Meryl noticed something strange. From her position she could see directly into the liquid pools of his eyes. Bright blue began to shift to a muted blue-green right before her, changing his look entirely to one that was at the same time softer and more intense. He was giving her that look again, the unreadable one from this morning. It was the same look, but this time 'grateful' wouldn't have described it at all. That was too simple, too casual a word for the strength of the gaze he was now penetrating her with.  
  
Outside the sky had turned orange and dogs barked at kids rushing hastily by on bikes. The red sauce bubbled contentedly on the stove. Blood pumped furiously through her veins and turned her vision to ochre. The heat from the stove and her exertion had made her lightheaded. The kitchen whirled and twisted and blurred until it seemed that Vash's eyes were the only things stable left in the world. The only things cool, and blue, and real. An oases. Meryl knew that somehow, she had to break that gaze, to dive right through its crystal waters and split the glimmering surface life a knife blade, or else be lost completely to its pull. But, even she couldn't have known what she was going to do next. Leaning forward, feeling for a moment as if she really was going to sink into his eyes, into his very soul, she touched her lips against his.  
  
His lips felt cool against her flushed skin and she felt her own lips tingle at their touch. Meryl couldn't quite describe the sensation. If she had to she would have compared it to the tiny shock one received from licking the positive end of a battery. This close to him she could smell him, his clothes and skin. The scent reminded her vaguely of the cool northern winds that would sweep across the desert in early fall when everyone was still thankful for their fresh caress.  
  
She was disturbed from her reverie by an insistent hissing. Pulling away from him she looked back into his eyes. The strange look was gone and for a moment he appeared fairly comical. His eyes were now a glazed, almost dull, cerulean, and his one delinquent blonde lock had been brushed into a position falling squarely between them. Meryl raised a hand gingerly to her lips. They were still tingling strangely, and the tip of her tongue (which she was quite sure had not been involved at all in the process) felt slightly numb. Confused, she looked around for the source of the hissing noise.  
  
A moment later she slid to the floor with a yelp and ran to rescue the boiling-over spaghetti pot. She turned the heat off and tossed on the lid. 'How long had they been like that?' she thought desperately to herself. 'What the heck were you thinking, anyways? Why not just paint a big red 'SLUT' sign on the front of your shirt? Now that's not quite fair, he started it. Yeah, and you finished it, didn't you?' Meryl squeezed her eyes shut with shame. Steeling herself for the ridiculing she was sure was about to descend, she turned around.  
  
Vash was still standing where she had left him. Only now his eyes had cleared, leaving a goofy look of shock plastered across his face. Blinking several times, he turned his bemused look upon her.  
  
"Supper's ready," she announced. And then with a slightly embarrassed smile, "Gotcha."  
  
Dinner passed with both of them studiously avoiding discussion of their recent "encounter". Vash regaled her with tales of some of the people he'd run into since they'd last been together. The places he'd been, the things he'd done. Over and over Meryl found herself laughing, or crying, or just shaking her head at the near impossible situations he had managed to get himself both into and out of. She also had his manner of eating to entertain her. He ate his spaghetti by slurping it up strand by strand. How he managed it without getting a drop of sauce on him was an absolute mystery. She thought about correcting his bad manners, but decided she was just glad he liked her cooking. Besides, it gave her something other than his eyes to look at. Going that route had not proved a good idea so far that evening.  
  
Afterwards Vash offered to help clean up the dishes, but Meryl waved him off and this time confined him to the living room. Their conversation continued over the light splashing sound of her washing.  
  
"I still just don't get it," she said, shaking her head and not bothering to hide her amazement, "How trouble just seems to follow you around." Vash turned from where he was leaning on the windowsill, gazing out at the violet twilight.  
  
"Did I ever tell you I had a cat?"  
  
Meryl blinked in confusion. "A cat?" she questioned, squinting across the room at him to see if he was being serious.  
  
"Ah huh," he said, wandering over to her pathetically small bookcase, "A black one." He crouched down to see what was on the lower shelves and pitched his voice so that she could still hear him talking. "He wasn't really mine. Actually, I've got no idea who he belonged to, if anyone. But everywhere I went, there he was."  
  
"It was crazy," Vash continued with a wondering shake of his head, "I'd leave him in one town, spend days crossing the desert, and then boom, he'd already be there waiting for me in the next town." Meryl set down the plate she was drying with an incredulous look. Even for Vash, this story seemed a little farfetched. "I began to think that maybe there was more than one cat so I paid closer attention," he continued, "But there wasn't. It was the exact same cat, every single time."  
  
"Vash," she chided, "That's just impossible."  
  
"I know," he replied. He had a strange, serious look on his face. "Then one day I got to thinking, 'Hey, it's a black cat! Maybe that's why I have all this rotten luck, it's always crossing my path!'." Meryl wanted to laugh, surely that couldn't be true, but he seemed so serious about it, so actually concerned, that she refrained. Instead, she steeled her voice to neutrality.  
  
"Whatever happened to it?"  
  
Vash straightened quickly to his full height. He seemed to be studying the items in her bookcase intently. "I don't know." In the growing darkness, he seemed almost sad for a moment. Shadows crept over his face and aligned along his thin, sharp nose. "One day he stopped coming around, or maybe I just stopped seeing him."  
  
Meryl paused in her work. She had heard him use that tone before, when he had spoken of Legato or of his brother. It brought with it a sense of loss, wind rustling through corpse weeds. A lingering sadness that she didn't know how to touch. He reached out a hand, turned silvery white in the failing daylight, and picked up something from the top shelf. He lifted it slowly to his face and blew off the gathered dust. Turning it in his hands, he cocked his head looking at the checkered detailing on the box. Smiling a big, childish smile, he turned startling green eyes upon her and asked jovially, "What's this?"  
  
Behind him, the streetlights came on in an yellow flash. She folded her dish towel and set the last of the plates away. Crossing the room she flicked on a light switch and reached to take the case from him.  
  
"It's a family heirloom of sorts," she explained, turning the box carefully in her hands. It was all wood, a rare commodity here. It had been made before the ships fell, but she thought it would only disturb him to hear its full history. Finding the little metal clasp, she flipped it open. Inside, the case was lined with some soft green fabric and gathered within, each in it's own specially made depression, were the beautiful carved wooden playing pieces. Vash was gazing at it with eyes that fairly glowed with interest. "My grandfather gave it to my dad, and since my brother never showed any interest in it, my dad gave it to me." Kneeling down on the carpeting before the sofa, she began carefully removing the pieces one by one. "It's a game," she explained, waving absently at them, "It's called 'Chess'."  
  
Vash was still standing next to her. She looked up at him, slowly taking in all six plus feet, to find him smiling back down at her.  
  
"I know this game."  
  
"Really?" she replied, impressed, "Most people have never even heard of it." He squatted down next to her, allowing his spindly legs to fold into a comfortably crossed position.  
  
"On the ship," he began, his eyes going vague for a moment as if he was really seeing into the past, "Rem liked to play games." Meryl's heart broke just a little, hearing him say that name with such longing. "This game was there," he reached delicately for one of the pieces shaped like a horse's head, "Except that it was on a computer." He held the cool, soft piece lightly on his palm. Time and care had worn the grain of the piece to a silky smoothness. He tipped it in his palm and light from the overhead lamp glinted off of it. He smiled slowly. "It's beautiful," he said. Abruptly turning his intense green eyes on her he asked, "Do you know how to play?"  
  
Taken aback, Meryl sputtered out an answer. "Ah, I guess so. I mean, my dad taught me all the moves and everything, but," and here she dropped her eyes from his heated gaze, embarrassment mixing with a small twinge of regret for not paying better attention to her father, "I'm not very good at it."  
  
"That's okay," he said smiling as he placed the horse-piece next to its mate on the carpet. Then, more carefully, hopefully, he questioned, "Do you maybe want to play?" There was so much of the pleading little boy in his tone and in the expectant, puppy eyed look he gave her then that there was no way she could ever have told him no.  
  
Releasing a short breath of laughter, she nodded.  
  
"Great!" he exclaimed, and immediately opened the box up to its checkered outside and starting placing the pieces. Meryl tried to copy him, not remembering exactly where everything went. When all was set Vash glanced over at the pieces on her side. Reaching across the board, putting their faces within inches of one another, he switched around the position of her two largest pieces. Rogue strands of his silken hair tickled at her nose. He glanced up at her then and, for the second time that day, she found herself slipping mindlessly into those enticing blue-green orbs. He spoke to her then, so close that she could feel the heat of his breath across her cheeks.  
  
"White goes first."  
  
"Huh? What?" she said stupidly, slowly, as if just coming out of a deep trance.  
  
"Your move," he stated, and calmly returned to his side of the board. 


	6. Chapter 6

It didn't take Meryl very long to lose the first match.  
  
"Ack!" she protested as Vash silently dropped his bishop into a winning combination. She raised her hands to rub at her temples. "I told you I'm not really good at this."  
  
"You weren't that bad," Vash replied as he retrieved all of the errant game pieces. "You just made a mistake seven moves back when you took my knight. I sacrificed it on purpose."  
  
Meryl stared at her companion. "You remember what happened seven moves ago?" Vash nodded, concentrating on resetting the board. "See, now, that's why I'm no good at this game," she went on in a self-depreciating manner. Staring at him in wonder she asked, "How do you do it?"  
  
Vash raised his eyes to meet hers with a confused look. "What, you mean remember stuff?" He shrugged, as if it wasn't important, and then went on in a mocking, high pitched voice, "You're the easily deceived type that sleeps on a tear-soaked pillow."  
  
Meryl's jaw dropped. She would have been completely confused about what the hell he was talking about if the words he had said had not once come out of her own mouth. Mind you, they had come out of her mouth over ten years ago. She didn't even really remember the incident that had occasioned them, but she remembered the sentiment which had added a biting touch to their wit. Bending in half with her shock she managed to splutter out, "How . . . How did you." Meryl let her own question die on her lips and shook her head in open amazement.  
  
Sitting up, she crossed her arms and looked at him seriously. "You have eidetic memory."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
Meryl almost smacked her forehead in sudden frustration. How could someone so obviously intelligent manage to sound so incredibly moronic? "Photographic memory. You remember things in exact reproduction, like a photograph." She gazed at him from under brows lowered in intense consideration. "Perfect," she added.  
  
Vash flashed her a twisted smile and shrugged his shoulders yet again. "I guess." Meryl nodded in understanding. Suddenly a heck of a lot of things she hadn't understood before became a lot clearer. Sighing, she turned her attention to the new game. She wondered where she should move first. Then, realizing that it probably wouldn't make a difference one way or the other in the outcome of the game, she picked a piece to start at random.  
  
Turning the board over to the outlaw, she took the time while he was focusing his attention on it to study him. She had known for a long time now that Vash was different, even so, she was always shocked whenever he did something that showed just exactly how special he was. She had to admit to being somewhat pleased that he remembered her as well as he did. Of course, there were some incidents from her travels that she would have preferred thinking he had forgotten. Certain times where she had smacked him a little roughly over the head even though he didn't really deserve it came to mind. And another instance involving her emerging from showering, not knowing that Vash was in their room losing all his money to Millie at cards. She had locked herself in the bathroom for hours afterwards, only coming out after Millie swore up and down that the wildly laughing outlaw she'd quickly ushered from the room had finally gone to bed.  
  
'Vash the Stampede,' she thought to herself as he lowered himself to his stomach, hands under his chin, to get a better look at the board, 'I wonder what other secret talents you have.' Meryl raised her hands to her face to hide both her secretive smile and the heat rushing to her cheeks from her own forward thoughts. Vash was looking at her now, having taken his turn. Meryl suddenly felt that he could see right through her hands to the telltale pinkness of her cheeks. His eyes seemed to bore into her, until she felt almost naked before them.  
  
Meryl was suddenly struck with a disturbing fear: What if he had X-ray vision as well?  
  
She grimaced at her own insecurities. 'That's impossible Meryl. Oh yeah, then why's he staring at me like that, huh?' Meryl lowered her hands, crossing her arms over her chest, and hoped that her face didn't look as hot as it felt to her. 'The least he could do is try not to look so smug and amused. It's indecent.' His smile widened suddenly and, chortling softly, he dropped his head into an open palm. 'Laughing? He's laughing! What the hell is he laughing at?'  
  
'Maybe he can read minds.'  
  
'No, don't even go there Meryl.'  
  
The night before she had been afraid to act her old self around him, scared he might run off and she'd never see him again. After spending a day in his company she was beginning to feel more secure about the stability of their relationship and its ability to survive minor altercations. She had the momentary urge to smack him one just on principle.  
  
"And exactly what are you laughing at?" she asked a tad testily.  
  
"You," he replied with all honesty. "Do you know your eyes change color when you're concentrating hard on something?" Meryl sensed an artful change of subject, but was too taken aback by the thought that he actually looked at her eyes to make a protest.  
  
"They . . . they do?" she asked in a flattered tone.  
  
"Ah huh, when you're angry too. They turn violet." Vash seemed to be studying the carpet intently. Meryl didn't know quite how she felt about the current situation. She had always been fascinated by Vash's eyes. The way they seemed to shine even in darkness, the way they could shift through all the layers of the blue and green spectrum, the way their edges softened whenever he was around children. It had never actually occurred to her that people might be interested in her own traits. Personally, she thought her eyes were pretty boring. A dull grey with only the slightest hint of blue, not even the striking silver of her mother's.  
  
Vash was now picking at the threads of her carpet. She wondered how long she'd been sitting there thinking about their respective appearances and contributing to the uncomfortable silence pervading the room. A random thought suddenly occurred to her as she learned forward to make her move. It was a question she was somewhat wary of broaching to him, but it had been bouncing around in the back of her mind ever since she'd first talked to him the night before.  
  
"Vash,?" she asked tentatively.  
  
"Mmmhhmmm," he said reaching forward to finger a pawn.  
  
"The other night you . . . you mentioned Knives." His head raised abruptly and he studied her. "I just . . .I was wondering. . ." Open eyes again. Accepting. Understanding. Pained. "What happened between you two."  
  
His look sobered immediately. Making his move he flipped off of his stomach and raised himself to a sitting position, leaning back upon his palms. He seemed to be considering her question deeply. Meryl almost told him that it was okay, she didn't really need to know, but instead she held her tongue. It seemed, today, that she was making up for all the chances she'd had in the past to ask him something and, instead, backed off at the last moment.  
  
"I found him not long after I left you two." There was a flatness to his voice. An automaton reciting a well known tale with no emotion in it whatsoever. "He was waiting." Vash closed his eyes and frowned remembering. "We fought. I won."  
  
"I figured that much," said Meryl, feeling the need to let him off. Nodding, he continued quickly as if he had something he wanted to get off his chest.  
  
"I didn't kill him, I kept my promise to myself, but . . ." here he trailed off with a faraway look. Face suffused with pain, he continued, "I hurt him real bad." Sighing, his mind elsewhere, Vash made his move without even bothering to look at the board. "I took him to a place where I could get him some medical attention. Where he'd be safe and I could keep an eye on him"  
  
Meryl was suddenly furious. In her mind's eye she was remembering all the times she had cleaned Vash's wounds and set bandages to them. She remembered how, after the incident with Legato, she and Millie together had carried him off of the bluff. How Millie had rigged a stretcher to run between their thomases and the two of them had spent the next day trudging on foot beneath the unforgiving suns. Millie had led the pack animals while Meryl walked behind doing her best to shield his scarred and bruised face from the piercing rays with her cape. How they had been afraid to take him to the nearest town and instead trudged on for iles, finally finding refuge in a tiny ramshackle village. How she had stayed by his side day and night caring for him.  
  
"You could have brought him to us, you know." Meryl's eyes were burning, half with anger and half in distress. "We brought you back halfway from the dead, was our treatment not good enough for your brother?" Meryl was on a roll now. Her anger was beginning to get the better of her at last. Ten years of wondering, ten years of asking herself what she'd done wrong. She would get the answer out of him at last. Her voice raising in outraged indignation she nearly shouted, "Didn't you trust us enough? Or was it just that you jumped at the excuse to get away from us?" Meryl's eyes were brimming with tears now. She tried to force them back, but the room was already swimming in her watery vision. Blinking away the blurry image of Vash staring shocked at her outburst, Meryl lowered her head shamefully.  
  
She hadn't meant to speak like that. She had never meant to accuse him of anything, not when she owed him so much. But she had to know. Ten years is a long time to wait for the answer to one question. 'Why?' she cried silently to herself, 'Why was I not even worthy of a goodbye?'  
  
"I couldn't go back." His voice was serious, steadied.  
  
"Oh, is that so?" Meryl wiped tears angrily from her cheeks. Her face stung where they had made hot, salty tracks upon it.  
  
"Yes."  
  
The timbre of his voice drew Meryl's eyes to him against her will. All personal concerns and ten year old grudges left her mind at his appearance. Vash looked sick. His eyes looked flatter than she had ever seen them before, hidden beneath the stormy shadows of his brows. He was flipping a chess piece over and over in his hands, but not paying attention to it. It was almost as if he didn't even see the game board in front of him anymore. Instead he was staring at her.  
  
"You didn't know Knives, Meryl. He was crazy. I didn't trust him even while he was still injured. I watched him day and night. Afterwards, it was years before I trusted him enough to even try to integrate him into society. He was a menace, a danger to all humanity." Vash shook his head. "I wasn't going to expose you two to that. Not anymore. No more pain and death. You'd already suffered through enough of that because of me." His eyes were still dull with anguish, but his overall expression exuded a sort of hope. Hope that she would understand his concern. That she would accept his answer as the only sensible option open to him.  
  
" You don't understand at all! None of that stuff ever stopped us from following you before."  
  
He shook his head. "Your job wasn't worth your life."  
  
"I wasn't following you because of my job."  
  
Vash blinked. He ducked his head to keep from meeting the intensity of her gaze.  
  
"I know."  
  
The room seemed suddenly oppressive. The air felt heavy enough to cut. Meryl almost choked on it. The temperature had dropped as well. She was trembling visibly. She gripped her knees to still her hands and gritted her teeth to stop them from chattering. Taking a deep calming breath like Millie had taught her, she steadied herself.  
  
She would not cry.  
  
It was bad enough that she had just been blubbering weakly before him. She should have known better, this is what comes from being emotional. This is what happens when you let go and listen to your feelings. This was why she always reacted to everything with anger. It was easier to control than sadness. It was easier to calm than despair. And it didn't hurt like this.  
  
He had known.  
  
She had suspected he might, but now it was certain. She could no longer make any excuses for him. He had known and he hadn't cared. Staring at the chessboard, it suddenly struck her how like real life it was. Not that war ever followed any strict rules like the ones the game imposed. No, instead it was like a cross section of the population. Little kings and pawns, going about their daily lives, never realizing that they were just the playthings of the immortals.  
  
Really, what had she expected.  
  
She gasped at the sense of his touch upon her cheek. She wanted to pull back, to slap him angrily away. Helpless even still, she turned to him as he ran the back of his real hand lightly down the side of her face. The touch was gentle and light. It reminded her strangely of feathers. He was gazing at her with that unnamable, intense look from before. This time, though, she set herself against him. She would not be drawn into those orbs again. It wasn't fair of him to tease her this way. It wasn't right to give someone a taste of paradise unless you were willing to give them the whole meal.  
  
Her cupped her face in his hand. "You don't understand. I wasn't willing to risk you."  
  
The world spun apart and came together again. The twin suns were born, exploding in showers of light and fire. Molten rock cooled into stone. Winds came, fast and furious, eating eagerly away at the rocks and leaving only sand. The winds, however, stayed. Whipping across barren plains where no life could grow they moaned into the emptiness, as if waiting for something. Above the horizon ran an unmarred expanse of sky. Bluer, even, than a lover's eyes.  
  
Setting the first finger of his other hand at the base of his queen, he slid it carefully forward.  
  
"Checkmate." 


	7. Chapter 7

The reflection certainly didn't look all that special.  
  
A pale face hovered above the collar of her light blue pajama top. Large grey eyes looked out from under midnight dark hair. Her toothbrush hung at an angle from a thin clamped mouth. Her ears felt naked without their telltale hanging earrings. They had been a good luck present from her parents when she first got her job at Bernardelli and she never liked to be without them. There was a slight red puffiness still around her eyes attesting to her recent outburst. Nope, nothing special here.  
  
'Could he really see anything in me?'  
  
There had been others in the past who had shown interest in her. They had made suggestive comments when they thought she was out of their hearing, had patted her behind when she waited tables, had eyed her from their desks across the room. Most never bothered to make more than a cursory examination. Whenever they did they were usually turned off by her controlling, anal attitude. Some had found her penchant for violence alluring, but those were not the type she was at all interested in. In fact, after she had rebuffed an inquisitive co-worker five years ago, brushing him off with barely a thought, she had come to the conclusion that none of the guys she'd ever met were her type.  
  
Well, maybe just one.  
  
One who was, once again, in her living room. One who had, not three- quarters of an hour before held her face in his hands and told her he hadn't been willing to risk her getting hurt. One who had stared at her almost as if injured when she had hopped up and announced nervously that it was time for her to be getting ready for bed.  
  
You stupid, stupid fool.  
  
She had escaped through her bedroom door. She hadn't even bothered to call out a hurried good night. Now here she was, brushing her teeth for at least 60 seconds, not forgetting to floss, being sensible old Meryl. Meryl who doesn't like getting hurt. Meryl who likes everything in her life to fit within stacked and labeled regularly sized boxes. Meryl who had gotten the chance of her lifetime again and screwed it up.  
  
Yeah, that was the sensible thing to do.  
  
Spitting toothpaste out into the sink and rinsing her mouth clean, she berated herself mentally. 'He gave you the perfect opening you fool. The least you could have done was ask him what he really meant by saying that. Maybe he would have said the same thing about Millie, but now you'll never now. Now you've left him sitting there in the next room with small army of game pieces to clean up, feeling like a maid, or worse, the family dog you don't allow on the bed.' Meryl put her head into her damp hands. Things had to be bad if even Sensible Meryl was scolding her for missing out on her chance at happiness. Striding over to her bed she sat down on the edge considering.  
  
There was no way she was going to be able to get any sleep tonight.  
  
She jumped at the knock upon her door.  
  
"Umm, Meryl," Vash questioned from the other side.  
  
"Yes," she replied with a quavering voice.  
  
"Umm . . ." there was a pause while he seemed to gather into his thoughts what he wanted to say. "It's just . . .ah . . . could I maybe come in."  
  
Meryl's heart was pounding again. "What?"  
  
"Well, it's just that . . . it's a little hard to talk to someone from behind a door." Crossing the room she opened the door a crack. He was sitting with his back to the wall next to the door. Swiveling his head up he gazed at her through the fringe of his uncontrollable mop of hair and smiled. "Oh, hello." He raised a hand to wave at her.  
  
Sighing loudly and trying to keep the amusement out of her voice she said, "Come in Vash."  
  
Bouncing to his feet, her followed her into the room and sat where she indicated. Crawling onto the bed she climbed onto her pillow and pulled her knees up to her chin. They sat like that in silence for some time; Meryl too frightened to open her mouth and say much of anything, Vash just calmly looking around the bedroom as if he'd never been in one before. Meryl studied him.  
  
'How the heck does he always manage that? To look at everything as if it's brand new? One hundred and forty years on this planet and he still learning, still admiring.' Personally, Meryl didn't find it all that fascinating. Same old dust, same old stark clear skies, same old people living and loving and having children and dying. But there he was, running his palm over her patterned bedspread as if her choice in home decorating was representative of something deep and meaningful.  
  
"Butterflies," he said suddenly, out of the blue.  
  
Meryl was startled from her thoughts. "Huh?"  
  
He was still studying the coverlet and avoiding her gaze. "Do you know what a butterfly is?"  
  
Meryl shook her head, and then realizing he wasn't looking at her and replied, "No."  
  
"They're little bugs." Vash lifted his head and looked over his shoulder out her window. Outside it was bright as twilight as the streetlights competed with the illumination of the three moons visible that evening. One of them, Meryl knew had a large and relatively recent crater marring its surface. "Kind of like moths. They eat nectar, stuff from flowers, you know." He glanced at her suddenly as if for confirmation. Meryl nodded, although she didn't really know anything about flowers. "There aren't many flowers here," he went on, echoing her thoughts, "So they wouldn't be able to survive."  
  
Meryl wondered, not for the first time, how Vash always seemed to have such personal knowledge of things that didn't even exist on Gunsmoke. He had gone on to studying the rest of her room, taking particular notice of the picture hanging over the head of her bed. It was the one real concession to needless beauty Meryl allowed herself. It was a landscape, a moon over the dunes. The artist had painted it so that the land had turned azure in the gathering darkness. The tops of the dunes were illuminated by light from the moon which turned them almost green. Behind everything, the sky midnight blue. She had bought it because the colors had reminded her of him, of his eyes. Something she would never have admitted to anyone, even Millie. She liked to stand back from it and squint, pretending there was a circular scar etched in the moon's surface. Every time she did so she later thought about taking it down to stop herself from forming silly notions involving impossible scenarios. But she never got around to doing it.  
  
Now Vash was staring at it while he continued his monologue.  
  
"They're beautiful, butterflies." His eyes vague with remembrance. "They start out as these ugly little worms and then they build a little house for themselves, and when they come out they're just amazing. All sorts of colors, mixed haphazardly, but none bleeding over into the other. Never one the same as another. And delicate. . ." Vash held out his hand, palm upwards. He looked at it for a moment, as if expecting one of the strange creatures he was describing to suddenly alight upon it. "So fragile, their little wings." He shook his head and rolled his hand into a fist. Meryl had the disturbing impression that he was crushing something with it, if only with his mind. Abruptly, he looked at her.  
  
"They don't live very long." His eyes were deadly serious. "Their beauty lasts only a short while before all you're left with is a memory of what they were." He cocked his head at her. His eyes were changing colors again, drawing her in dangerously. "But the shortness of it all makes them all the more beautiful. All the more worth watching while you have the chance."  
  
Meryl just nodded. She didn't know what to say, but somehow, she understood. Inexplicably, she wished that butterflies could survive on her desolate planet. She wished that she could see one.  
  
"So," he said with determination in his voice.  
  
"So?"  
  
"There's something I've been meaning to ask you."  
  
"There . . .is?"  
  
"Remember the cat?" Meryl blinked in confusion. Oh, he was talking about their discussion from before. She nodded in enthusiastic reply. "Well," he went on, "I was just thinking about when the last time I saw him was."  
  
"Oh?" she said simply.  
  
Vash nodded. "It was in that village, the one where you girls stayed after I went to find Knives. On the very day I left, in fact." Getting no reaction from her based on this statement, he continued. "I'd gotten so used to him following me, to him always being there, that I barely noticed him." She could almost see Vash's concentration drifting off. His eyes clouded over and started wandering aimlessly over the chipped paint of her walls as if looking for something.  
  
In an attempt to bring him back to the subject, she broke the silence. "I don't get it . . . you want to ask me about the cat?"  
  
"Oh no!" he said in a blinking return to the conversation. "No I wanted to ask you what you had been going to say."  
  
"Huh? What?!?" Meryl's confusion was completely unfeigned. So was her terror. 'He doesn't mean . . .he couldn't be talking about . . .what if he is?' Her heart was beating so loudly that she was sure he must be able to hear it. Hell, he probably could hear it even if he didn't have preternaturally hearing. Her breath was coming in quick, short, near hyperventilation gasps. He was looking at her again. 'Don't look at his eyes!' she shouted silently to herself. She let her gaze come to rest on the relatively safe area of his nose.  
  
"The day I left," he said simply. "You were waiting to talk to me. You were about to say something when Millie ran up with Wolfwood's Punisher." He smiled at her and Meryl could feel her whole midsection turning to ice. Damned eidetic memory. "I just wondered if it was anything important." Her eyes flicked up to meet his of their own accord. He had that same look she had seen on him several times already that day. The look that she was already beginning to associate with a languorous warmth spreading throughout her limbs, combined with a near electric tingling in her extremities. Not to mention a complete retreat from comprehensible speech.  
  
"I was . . .umm . . . I uh . . ."  
  
She recognized the feeling she was experiencing. On clear nights when she was a child her brother and her had laid out on blankets on the dunes that began to curve their sandy sleekness just outside the city walls. They would gaze up at the stars and, if they were laying very still, they would swear they felt the ground beneath them moving. It was almost like they could sense the world revolving along on its endless track. As if the whole universe was a spinning top, with them as its fulcrum. There had been power in that feeling, as well as fear. They had laughed at the freedom of it all and then dug their fingers uselessly into the sand. Afraid that with the world tipping thusly they would be flung from it.  
  
"I . . ."  
  
This wasn't right. Fairy tales were not supposed to come true. Wizards did not drop out of the sky and offer you the ability to go back and alter one of the choices in your life. No matter how much you hoped and prayed, you had to live with the decisions you'd made. Everyone was accountable for their own actions. People were not supposed to get second chances. It wasn't fair that she should get hers when so many others suffered and died, never able to overcome the mistakes of their past.  
  
But then Vash the Stampede had always been keen on second chances.  
  
"I . . ."  
  
He cupped her cheek with a smooth palm, the same way he had brushed her bedspread, and leaning forward, gently touched his lips to hers.  
  
The world was spinning, tilting. Meryl gripped her bed covers in desperation to keep herself from sliding off. She could feel his hair brushing lightly against her forehead. Just short of tickling, it distracted her momentarily from her fright. His hand was almost unbearably warm against her face. That was surprising seeing as how the rest of her body felt like a furnace. His lips were soft and dry and the pressure behind them hesitant, almost questioning.  
  
Surprised at her own daring, she leaned into him and removed the shy nature from his kiss.  
  
He pulled away a bit then. Not so much as to break their connection, but enough that she could see his eyes hovering before hers. They were at their most striking. A bright, almost luminescent, aquamarine. They were clear as crystal and the intensity she had noted earlier had, if anything, increased. It was a look she thought that, just maybe, she was beginning to understand.  
  
He pulled away from her then, leaving her gasping. His eyes never left hers as he moved away, the hair falling over them in a disorganized curl making him look like he was ten years old. The boyish grin he was flashing at her only added to the picture.  
  
"I was kind of hoping that was it."  
  
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I personally feel that the story ends perfectly well right here. However, as I conceived this entire storyline around a sexual situation, I figured I should probably put it in. Besides, I've never actually written one out before and I'd like to give it a try. The point is, if you're not into that sort of thing, you can stop right here and go on to the next story (if you want) having missed nothing of any real importance. Otherwise, continue at your own risk. 


End file.
